When I told some New York friends recently that Memorial Day weekend would find me eating fried chicken in the Paddock at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, watching the 92nd running of the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, they were shocked.
We have not yet met but I look forward to greeting you (N. Scott Cupp). Already I am in your debt. You gave the time to listen to my speech repeatedly and the time to write a response. Further you say you found it very interesting and are appreciative of much that it says. Add to this my ready admission that listening to the speech cannot have been a pleasant experience if one identifies ones self with the progressive camp. Thank you for your grace.
Ever since the November article in the Layman quoting you (Jerry Andrews) from Gathering X came out, I have wrestled with whether or not to write in response to that article. I then listened to your speech (several times) … and I appreciated much of what you had to say. Recognizing that it was intended to buck up the troops, it left many questions unanswered for those who were not there and yet were painted by your broad brush.
Editor’s Note: In order to help overview peacemaking, justice and environmental initiatives coming before the General Assembly, the Outlook invited Ron Kernaghan of Fuller Seminary, co-chair of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) and Chris Iosso, coordinator of ACSWP, to allow our readers to listen in to a conversation between them on the related proposed legislation.
This year we observe the hundredth anniversary of the so-called “Social Creed of the Churches,” adopted in 1908 at the founding of the Federal Council of Churches. Frank Mason North, who in 1904 had written the hymn “Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life,” proposed it. Charles Stelzle, a Presbyterian engaged in ministry to working people in New York, seconded the motion.
The four declared candidates for moderator of the 218th General Assembly (2008) were together for the first time in two back-to-back forums on April 25 held at Presbyterian-related Bloomfield College in Bloomfield, N.J., and Lawrenceville Church in Lawrenceville, N.J.
Well, this is our all new blogging system. I hope you all like it. Please check out the link to My Blog..
By way of disclosure, I am well into my 74th year, and have been a Presbyterian all of my life, first in the old Northern church, then the United Church in the North, then the old Southern Church, then the Northern Church (in the South), the Southern Church (in the almost North), and finally our present Presbyterian denomination. I have served as a deacon in two of those denominations, and a pastor in three of them. I was raised in a congregation with history that stretched back to the early 1700s, and in my teenage years I was
"Women Blaze an Interfaith Trail: Two teachers become first Jewish female and first Muslim female to receive advanced degrees from Catholic Theological Union," and "She's First Jewish Graduate of Catholic Theological Union" were headlines in The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times on May 15.
On May 15 the California Supreme Court affirmed the rights of same gender couples to the legal protections and responsibilities of marriage. Not coincidentally, in 1948 it was the California Supreme Court that first extended equal protections to interracial couples — a full sixty years ago, twenty years before Loving v. Virginia declared all miscegenation laws unconstitutional. The ruling will go into effect thirty days after the decision.
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission (GAPJC) has ruled that Jane Adams Spahr, a California minister, did not violate the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) by performing two “ecclesiastical” wedding ceremonies for lesbian couples.
An overture to this year’s General Assembly from Grace Presbytery is raising questions about the continued use of the General Assembly Per Capita Assessment as part of the church’s mission funding system.
George Orwell’s classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” makes the telling point that language “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”1
This article discusses four problems posed by the draft revision of the Form of Government, now before the 2008 General Assembly. My aim is to improve the document, not criticize it. We all want a church government that is simple, clear, dynamic, workable in the 21st century, and faithful to our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Editor’s Note: The e-Link overture discussed in this article is a revised version of an overture proposed but not adopted at the Birmingham GA. The overture was passed by the Beaver-Butler Presbytery and is #010.
Warren Wilson College of Asheville, N.C., last fall issued a challenge to pastors, through The Presbyterian Outlook, to write an “eco-sermon,” exploring “a Christian understanding of our place in creation.”
“Play Ball!” — What a great issue (Outlook, cover date April 21) about baseball, which most thinking people would agree is God’s favorite game.
Recently our church has been studying the shortest books of the Bible. The epistle to Philemon has been of particular interest because it is so focused.
Saying “No” to an aspiring leader isn’t easy.
When an inappropriate person asks for a leadership slot, it can seem kinder, certainly less conflict-laden, to say “Yes” and see what happens.
(PNS) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)-related publications and others won awards in the 2007 “Best of the Christian Press” competition sponsored by the Associated Church Press — the oldest and largest religious press association in North America.
The members of the General Assembly Council (GAC) have taken great strides to enlarge our world mission work. In the process, they and Presbyterian Foundation together have sought to deploy all available funds for use in mission and ministry.
However, three proposals coming before the San Jose GA this June 21-28 could alter the way those funds get invested and deployed (see p. 8). If the commissioners handle these proposals well, the mission of the church will be advanced. If mishandled, controls built into the system to ensure proper allocation of funds may be compromised.
It’s a dispute that’s been brewing for the better part of a year, and now has splashed into the open.
The dispute: When there’s a disagreement over how funds restricted by donors should be spent, who decides – the Presbyterian Foundation or the General Assembly Council?
LOUISVILLE — Victor Loyd “Vic” Jameson, who chronicled the life of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) with an uncanny combination of wit and wisdom for more than 30 years, died May 18 in a Santa Fe skilled nursing facility of complications from a fall in his home Aug. 26, 2007. He was 83 years old.
A native of Clayton, N.M., Jameson graduated from Eastern New Mexico University in 1949 after serving three years in the U.S. Army during World War II. He taught school in Hobbs, N.M., for two years before discovering his life’s calling as a journalist.
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Citing a ministry characterized by service in a variety of national regions, types of service, and ecumenical initiatives, William Paul “Bill” Tarbell, pastor of Saluda Church in Saluda, S.C., is seeking the position of stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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